My wife and I have donated generously to two musicians we know and a fashion designer we know in NYC. In the case of the musicians, we knew them for years. One was the music director of our choir for 8 years. He is incredibly talented and his career as a conductor is starting to really take off. We helped fund a project he created with several other musicians in San Francisco to commission and perform new compositions. The other musician is the lead mezzo soprano in our choir -- we've also hosted home recitals for her and the soprano and tenor leads.

We got to know the fashion designer first online and then we met her in January in NYC. Her kickstarter campaigns helped fund a runway show one year and a collection look book last year.

The fashion designer's kickstarter campaign for the runway show was actually the first one we donated to even though we only knew her online at the time. She is very active on social media, e.g., facebook, twitter and her blog and because we were following her we gradually got to know what an intensely passionate and hardworking professional she on top of being incredibly talented.

I think her kickstarter campaign was so successful because of the way she personally connects with online friends to build support for her dream. We have seen other campaigns fail because they lack this kind of connection. It is as if the artists, etc. are sitting back and wondering why people don't realize how wonderful they are. Maybe it should be solely about the product or art but in reality so many talented people are competing for limited resources you have to do something special to stand out.

A lot of artist are different kind of people. It comes down to how we communicate. Some people think with words and others pictures and others music and there are probably some other methods. I think with in a few seconds with pictures a books worth of words. I'm terrible with words.